and, from new york, democrat kent conrad, chairman of the senate budget committee. senators, welcome back to fox news sunday. >> thanks for having me. >> chris: before heading to hawaii for christmas the president laid out a new, stripped-down plan to avert the fiscal cliff. here's what it is, extend the bush tax cuts for people making less than $250,000. extend unemployment benefits for the 2 million people who will run out, next month. and, delay the sequester of $110 billion, in spending cuts, next year. for all of the talk of $4 trillion in debt reduction the plan would only save $800 billion, over ten years. senator conrad, is that the best that washington can do over the next nine days, and can you pass even that? >> look, chris. it may come to that but we can do better. and we should do better. this is an opportunity to do something that would be hugely important for the country. and, my own belief is, what we ought to do is take speaker boehner's last offer, the president's last offer, split the difference, and that would be a package of about $2.6 trillion.